


to burn a hole in the sky (you have to start somewhere)

by hiza-chan (callunavulgari)



Series: to burn a hole in the sky (you have to start somewhere) [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Crossover, F/M, M/M, Multi, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-26
Updated: 2012-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-30 03:41:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/327354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/hiza-chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing is whole - and nothing is broken; a love song to waltz through time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to burn a hole in the sky (you have to start somewhere)

**Author's Note:**

> 1) For those of you who don't know, this fic is a sequel to Chance a Glance at the Stars, a Doctor Who/Kingdom Hearts fic that I wrote a little while ago. Considering that this won't make much sense if you haven't read that one, go ahead and do so. Don't worry though- that one is about 10,000 words shorter than this one.  
> 2) I recently found this [really awesome TARDIS map post](http://www.flickr.com/photos/50409075@N05/sets/72157623985805505/) of awesome, so go visit that. I obviously couldn’t really do it justice, but the first few floors are based on it.  
> 3) Rae, I love you. I am so sorry that I took so long with this, but I sincerely hope that the wait was actually worth it.  
> 4) Chances are I am going to wind up writing more in this universe. After all, I still owe tierfal some crack fic about kittens. So. There's that.  
> 5) I love all of you- every single person who listened to me bitch and cheered me on. Seriously. Even though this is mild on the fic scale of hugeness, it’s the longest fic that I have ever written. And it kind of killed me. Just a little.  
> 6) neffectual, I may have used part of your end note for my summary. I'm sorry. It struck a chord. Hopefully you don't mind?  
> 7) And if you're curious, [I've made a playlist of the songs I listened to while writing this.](http://www.youtube.com/playlist?p=PL75DF46D79E8ADBB5)
> 
> And finally, I would not have been able to post this without the help of the following lovely ladies: calciseptine, faorism, darthvair_65, neffectual, and as always, my light when all other lights go dark, rudy_flamthrowa. You were all amazing, and seriously, thank you so much for holding my hand through all of this.

 

When the Doctor was younger, a friend once told him that some things will always be impossible. Some things are in flux, ever changing, while others stay set in stone. He’d given examples, as well; how the Doctor would never manage to get higher marks than him or how the Doctor would never quite manage to scale the ranks of the Academy high enough to get a ship of his own.  
  
He’d promised though, that when he got his own ship, the Doctor could be a member of his crew. That he wouldn’t let the Academy talk him out of it. That he knew the Doctor was meant for more than his sub par marks would allow.  
  
He was right, of course. At least as far as the Doctor being meant for more was concerned. They never really got around to the other things, unfortunately. The Doctor ran-- stole a ship while he was at it-- and showed his friend that he would never let himself be set in stone.  
  
The fact that the man in question had grown into a homicidal mass murderer is neither here nor there.  
  
Now, with Roxas poking half-heartedly at the consoles as he watches Sora guide his gummi ship away from the TARDIS, the Doctor wonders what he’d think of this endeavor. This mad, impossible thing that he’d suggested before he had the chance to think about it. Before he could think of the possibility of heartbreak, and the endless paradoxes that could enfold from this simple thing. He wonders- what would _he_ think? Would he laugh at the Doctor for his foolish sentimentality, chide him for catching a case of humanity, and classify this as an impossibility? Or would he get that soft look he used to, and say, “Well, we’ll see, won’t we?” and take the Doctor with him to set the stars straight?  
  
He supposes he’ll never know.  
  
(He thinks the Master-- his Master, back when they were just Koschei and Theta with the whole of the universe stretching before them- would have liked Roxas. He always did have a thing for blonds.)  
  
Roxas is still staring at Sora’s ship through the TARDIS’ open door with a bit of a heartsick expression, like he’s not sure whether he should be feeling sad or excited. The Doctor thinks it’s incredibly interesting that this slip of a boy can ignore the swirls and dancing flames of nearby Betelgeuse to focus on the fading blocks of a ship he’s seen dozens of times.  
  
He’s poking at the tea tray now, stirring Sora’s barely touched tea -long gone cold- with half a biscuit while the other hand taps an unknown beat onto the back of his seat. He’s fidgety, like he’s got too much energy built up under his skin and doesn’t quite know what to do with it- but beneath that there’s a steady calm reminiscent of a warrior.  
  
He might be mad for doing this, and he is- just a mad man with a box who hates the sound of children crying, but as things often go in his world, events line up. A cheeky brunette with a wide smile and a ridiculous space ship found him time and time again- ran into him through all of time and space, until their ships decided that they should meet. And this boy had another boy trapped inside his brain, hiding amongst the wrinkly folds of the cerebellum and the hippocampus, a boy who didn’t quite fit. And it wasn’t chance that just that last week the Doctor had obtained a machine that would work perfectly for this type of thing. That when he looked at that boy who didn’t quite fit, he realized that he _could_ help him.  
  
After all, everything happens for a reason.  
  
So maybe he isn’t all that mad for taking on such a ludicrous task. Maybe Roxas has a hope. Maybe things won’t be tragic this time around.  
  
But none of that matters.  
  
This isn’t his story to tell.  
  
.  
  
Finding Axel, as it turns out, is not as easy as it seems. See, the Doctor has this nasty habit of getting distracted, and more often than not they don't _quite_ end up at their intended destination. It’s not just the fact that he’s a terrible navigator, though by now it’s abundantly clear to Roxas that this is also the case. But the Doctor never really travels in a straight line. He weaves in and out of time, the TARDIS clattering around the time vortex like a semi with a trashed driver. He never really makes it exactly when and where he wants. It’s always, “Oh yes, whoops, you wanted 2010 AD, didn’t you? Well, BC’s just as nice, and while we’re here...”  
  
It’s as endearing as it is frustrating, though Roxas does enjoy the candies they procure from the various worlds that happen to get in their way.  
  
They pass through dozens of worlds, moons, and space colonies that against all odds float between a trio of star clusters. They meander back and forth though time, skip into the 82nd century on a moon called Aepil XVI, engage with villains and heroes, and borrow a hat from someone called Abraham Lincoln. It's all extraordinarily interesting, and there's a great deal of running involved that makes Roxas wish he'd spent the last few years exercising rather than reclining on an easy chair somewhere behind Sora's eyelids. The fact of the matter, though, is that they haven't even started looking for Axel yet.  
  
So, on the twenty-seventh time that they step out of the TARDIS, (which is only the sixteenth time they’ve landed on solid ground) and the Doctor shoves a hand through his tawny hair, saying, "Well, this isn't quite right," Roxas tries to convince the old timer to teach him how to drive. Only the Doctor seems to remember that Roxas punctuated his request by lashing out with a golden pepper grinder from the navigation plate, but after a bit more convincing in the forms of bruises and pathetic eyes, he attempts to pass along his skipper’s knowledge of the blue box.  
  
When that fails, as things with the Doctor are wont to do, he manages to convince the TARDIS to show him. This isn't exactly the easiest thing to do either. In fact, it was probably extremely unwise of him to plunge headlong into the mesomorphic folds of wiring beneath the ship’s bronze exterior paneling in the hopes that asking her core would get a more positive answer. He’d never really considered that the TARDIS, while a time machine, was also a _lady_ , and ladies didn’t particularly like it when you flicked up their skirts. After much groveling (and several weeks of getting shocked every time he touches a horizontal surface) she seems to forgive him, teaching him through a series of affirmative hums (and many shrill negative shrieks) and one game of hot and cold that the TARDIS takes far too seriously. Eventually, after a long, exhausting struggle and more than a few weeks bumping around the Time Vortex, she manages to beat it into him.  
  
After an ill advised practice run to ancient Rome, Roxas nurses a few blistered fingers and, according to the Doctor, is “lucky to have an upper torso,” but he’s finally a hundred percent sure that he _really_ gets it this time time.  
  
It’s times like this that Roxas mourns the fact that the TARDIS doesn’t have windows. He thinks that it would make the whole traveling in time and space thing a bit more interesting-- watching the stars pass them by. The Doctor tells him that she had some once, but after a bit of a mishap with a baseball being tossed around (which wasn’t his fault, of course) she just stopped producing them. Roxas doesn’t really blame her.  
  
So he props the TARDIS doors open with a wayward shoe while the Doctor sulks bitterly in the corner like a wronged cat and watches the Clock Tower swell against the tangerine sky. It looms over the rest of Twilight Town, larger than he remembers, and looking at it, he can almost taste the sea salt in the back of his throat. There’s the tram, loud on it’s rickety track- and the place where Hayner taught him how to skateboard. The Secret Place, with it’s heaps of junk and treasures, like they were playing Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, never wanting to grow up- carving out a place of their own.  
  
There is the place that Axel came for him, and the place where Axel had grinned when he thought Roxas remembered who he was.  
  
There are tunnels and an old mansion, train tracks where a mouse king had walked. Hundreds of memories, real and fake, clawing their way through his head. Olette helping him with his french homework, Pence nattering on about that trip to the beach that he’d taken with his family. Hayner grinning at him, and helping him beat Seifer into the ground.  
  
There’s a patch of ground down there where Roxas had first met Axel.  
  
A specific seat he’d taken on the Clock Tower when they’d watched their first sunset.  
  
The place where he’d asked Axel if nobodies could love.  
  
(The place where Axel had looked at him, shoulders tense and jaw clenched, and said, “You need a heart, man.”)  
  
There’s Xion and Hayner and Larxene and Pence and Hayner and all the other Nobodies, and always, always Axel. Everything will always come back to him. Roxas will always come back to him, because Axel isn’t the only one who felt like he had a heart. It feels like there’s something clawing up his throat, a lump that screams _I’mscaredIwantIloveImissIcherish_ all at once.  
  
It feels like hope, and it hurts.  
  
.  
  
Though, nothing is ever perfect right away.  
  
Just because Roxas _got_ them there doesn't necessarily mean he'd found the right doorway. It’s like he’s new to his body again- meandering around Castle Oblivion without a clue as to what he was doing, who he was.  
  
They'd jumped back too far, the Doctor says, and it won't work. “Paradoxes, you see. Never interfere with your own timeline,” he sighs, sipping tea out of an old and battered taffy tin that is supposedly from a planet whose tourism relies completely on its confectionery industry.  
  
“It can get rather nasty,” he adds quietly, watching the two silhouettes atop the tower.  
  
They can't take him now, he says, because it would change too many things.  
  
Somewhere out there, there’s a specific point in time, a specific place that shouldn’t exist. A passageway, betwixt and between, that is full of Dusks and a terrified keyblade master who thinks he’s about to die. Roxas remembers that. How Sora’s heart was too loud-- how the keyblade had quivered in his hand as he'd watched the Dusks come, relentless and unstoppable. How Sora had heaved a frustrated sigh, and thought, "well, that's it then."  
  
Mostly though, he recalls the way that _he_ had felt when Sora saw Axel, and how hope had flooded their chest. Without Axel, they would have died there. The Dusks would have overtaken them, ripped them apart and gotten to the gore. There would be no fading softly into darkness for Sora- he would die, and it would be messy; crushed by nothings in a place that didn’t exist. It would be like they’d never existed at all.  
  
“Yeah. Okay. Maybe you have a point there,” he concedes, watching himself smile and take a bar of ice cream from Axel. It would be so _easy_ though, so simple to walk up to Axel and that broken part of himself and take Axel away.  
  
The Doctor watches too, a crease between his brows and something _fragile_ lurking in those ancient eyes. Roxas wonders how many times he has watched someone he loved mere seconds out of his reach, and thought that he could save them. How many times he must have reminded himself about paradoxes, and how many times he’s been tempted to brave the dangers of working with his own timeline.  
  
He wants to haul Axel away from everything Roxas is about to say and do that hurts him. Instead, he yanks the Doctor away by his tie, backs them into the TARDIS and frowns down at the controls, squinting at the coordinates scrolling across the screen. She hums beneath him, a low, sad purr that he thinks might be her way of comforting them.  
  
He does not look at the Doctor.  
  
The Doctor sidles up next to him and nudges an elbow into his side, bumps their hips together playfully. "Cheer up, Roxy-boy. Let's try again."  
  
.  
  
The second time isn't much better than the first. Sora's talking to Axel and Axel-- he looks wrecked, his hair drooping pathetically, bruises smeared beneath his eyes. He's waving a hand, rolling his eyes, using all the right motions- like a marionette getting its strings tugged- but Roxas can tell. He hurts.  
  
They leave. Still not right.  
  
.  
  
Axel isn't even there the third time.  
  
(When Saix glowers at Sora and says, "Axel would stop at nothing to turn you into a heartless," something inside him _aches._ )  
  
.  
  
Roxas remembers this place; betwixt and between they’d called it. He remembers the sky blues, the emerald greens, and the burnt tangerine creeping along what passed for walls. It still smells like darkness, and he can’t help but recall feeling completely helpless, trapped inside of Sora's heart as the Dusks swarmed around them.  
  
He remembers what came after.  
  
This isn't the best place to yank him out of his timeline, he knows that. It’s risky, impossible to predict whether or not they can even affect the outcome of the battle. What if the Dusks still overrun them? What if Axel’s sacrifice was the only way this could possibly end? For the first time he wonders if maybe they should have jumped even _further_ back, if they should have grabbed Lea before he died- but that paradox- that paradox is definitely too dangerous to even consider.  
  
Sora's eyes widen when he sees Roxas, stumbling with his keyblade still buried to the hilt inside a dusk. The dusk disappears, flakes of dust settling around Sora's knuckles and wrists like snow. He doesn't know yet about the Roxas inside of him, just knows the name and the face. Roxas hopes that he’s not knocking over too many dominoes here. Ripping a brand new alternate universe into the fabric of time and space isn’t what he’d been aiming for.  
  
The Doctor is behind him, rocking on his heels at the edge of Roxas' vision, fingers twisting anxiously in his pockets. He looks nervous-- like he wants to run.  
  
No running this time.  
  
Axel--- well, Axel can’t stop looking at him. He stops where he is, flames smoldering around the edges of his chakrams, and just _stares_ \-- mouth parted, glancing back and forth between Sora and Roxas with a crease between his brow. He looks so confused that Roxas can't help laughing. There's something light and happy curling up in his chest, and he can't begin to describe the feeling of really seeing Axel again, of knowing with complete clarity that _this is it- this time I save him._  
  
"Axel," he breathes.  
  
"Roxas," Axel acknowledges quietly, as though he's afraid the word will make him vanish. Then, "But Sora-"  
  
Roxas shakes his head and grins. It's not Sora's grin. Not the memory of a smile. It's _Roxas'_ and well, that's kind of a huge deal, feeling his _own_ smile-- having Axel there to _cause_ it.  
  
Oathkeeper feels good in his hand, and for a moment he wonders if maybe he shouldn't reach, shouldn't grasp for that bit of Xion that got carried over, but when Bond of Flame appears in his other hand, he thinks that maybe she wanted him to have it.  
  
"I'll tell you later."  
  
.  
  
They let Sora go, making a portal for him to the World that Never Was, because although he still seems puzzled, he has things he needs to do.  
  
Sora leaves with a frown and a faint goodbye, waving halfheartedly while Goofy leans close and whispers loudly, “Gawrsh, Sora. That was nice o’ them ta help out.”  
  
They disappear, and Roxas is left only with the Doctor, Axel, and a time machine that seems a little too nervous about parking where there shouldn't’t be solid ground.  
  
The Doctor seems a bit apprehensive, peering at the shadows as if he's expecting one of the aliens he's told Roxas about to pop up and try to end the universe, but already Roxas can feel the new memories slotting into place over the old ones. The memory of watching through Sora's eyes as Axel faded away isn't gone- he thinks that it will never be gone, but it's hazier, replaced with the memory of watching himself and Axel silhouetted in front of the TARDIS as the portal closed behind Sora.  
  
Axel still looks confused, like despite fighting off Dusks alongside Sora and Roxas, he's still not entirely sure it's all real.  
  
He ushers Axel into the TARDIS with an amused smile and a gentle hand to the small of his back. He has some explaining to do.  
  
.  
  
It isn't until later, when Axel's reclining back against the controls, his coat hanging in shredded tatters around his calves that they realize they have a problem.  
  
Muscle memory had taken over the moment they'd stepped into the TARDIS, and Roxas is half busying himself with tea (Eiryen fire water, spicy with just a hint of chai) when he hears the Doctor groan from the other room. Axel makes an inquisitive sound, something soft in the back of his throat that makes Roxas think of the time he and Xion had tried to explain the rules of Scrabble when they didn't quite understand it themselves.  
  
The Doctor coughs, and Roxas is just rounding the corner, when he says, "Well, this won't do."  
  
Axel is frowning, back rigid. "What?"  
  
The Doctor sighs, and scratches at his temple with the sonic screwdriver, face twisted into a mask of frustration. He starts fiddling with the TARDIS's controls, muttering to himself as he goes. "Why do you two have to be so complicated," he whines. Axel sputters a bit, and glances towards Roxas, a faint flush rising to his cheeks. He clenches his hands into his coat though, and grumbles a bit, growling, “I’ll show you complicated...” before he starts plucking at the gadgets nearby.  
  
Roxas takes a moment to let the surge of affection consume him, because here is _Axel-_ his Axel, right here in front of him and grumbling as if they’d run out of ice cream on a hot summer day. He smiles and looks away from Axel, because he doesn’t know how long he can hold out before he makes a grab for his coattail, attempts a hug, or, if very desperate, just crawls into his lap. He raises his brows at the Doctorand sets the tea a safe distance away from the Doctor. He'd learned quickly that hot liquids in close proximity to a harried Doctor was not a particularly clever combination.  
  
"What is it?" he asks softly, and Axel turns to look at him when the Doctor doesn't, his forehead wrinkled with frown lines. He wants to touch him. Has to touch him, because he has to see if he’s real-- he has to.  
  
He’s just starting to reach for Axel’s hand when the Doctor finally stops tinkering with the controls and turns part way towards them, canting his hip against the control panel and grimacing at him. "There's something we didn't quite factor into our plans, Roxas."  
  
Roxas scowls, ignoring the way Axel is suddenly frowning and saying in a sharp voice, “what plans, Roxas?” because that means there's something wrong with _Axel._ "What?" he hisses, too demanding- ungrateful, but he's worried and the Doctor just looks at him, slow and meaningful, dragging a hand over to press against Axel's chest (“What? What? Dude, get off of me-”) and what does he-  
  
Oh.  
  
_Oh._  
  
How could they have been so stupid? Forgetting one of the most important parts, like putting Humpty Dumpty back together again and forgetting the yolk. Fuck.  
  
He licks suddenly dry lips-- doesn't let himself look at Axel. "What do we do?"  
  
The Doctor smiles at him, sudden and bright, like he’s trying to make this whole mess into less of a big deal- as if he’s trying to reassure them. He pats Axel's shoulder and his smile broadens into a grin at Axel's look of outrage. "Well, first, I guess we need to find you a heart."  
  
.  
  
It's not that simple.  
  
.  
  
It's really not.  
  
.  
  
But that will come later.  
  
.  
  
They start out towards a planet that the Doctor thinks might be able to help them. He says it’ll take them a bit to reach it- a few days, maybe, and that they might want a chance to catch up anyway.  
  
They explain things, first, because when the Doctor tries to leave the telling to just Roxas, he panics and latches onto the Doctor’s shirtsleeves, all but begging for help.  
  
It’s not that he thinks Axel won’t believe him, it’s that he doesn’t know where to _start_.  
  
So they explained about collisions between space ships and Roxas' body and Sora's soul and the machine that let it happen, the machine that let Roxas _live._  
  
Axel’s always been an expressive person for someone that doesn’t have a heart. He’s all hands, talking with them-- waving them about like he’s made it his life mission to elbow someone in the eye. But Axel when he’s silent-- Roxas thinks that that is when he’s most expressive of all. He’s quiet, and relatively still, but it’s the play of emotion in his eyes- the way that his body twitches when the Doctor tells him about a time that Roxas had nearly gotten himself killed trying to get back to him, the way that his shoulders loosen whenever they mention something that all but screams, _this is how much Roxas loves you._  
  
When Axel asks about the machine, and how something had transferred an entire consciousness into a brand new body, the Doctor explains it to him. The data banks stored in the center of a man-made planet with every possible design, every possible species. He grins widely and elbows Axel in the side, telling him with a faintly conspiratorial look, "I told him to go for the wings, but he seemed to think he was above them."  
  
Axel had grinned a bit, playing up his reaction and stood up from his chair- hand to his heart and intoned, perfectly deadpan, "Roxas, how could you? _Wings_ , Roxy, big flappy wings with feathers and stuff."  
  
And after, the Doctor leaves with some excuse about playing with the TARDIS’ circuitry and maybe having a bath (Roxas personally hopes he doesn’t mean at the same time, but with the Doctor, you never really know), leaving them alone in the control room with just the echoes of time outside to mask the silence.  
  
“So,” Axel says, drifting a bit closer to him.  
  
“So...” Roxas says, because now that the impossible has finally been achieved, now that he actually has Axel, he’s not entirely sure what to do with him.  
  
The controls are dim now that the Doctor has left, as if the TARDIS herself is trying to tell Roxas to do something already. The faint teal glow lights up the left side of Axel’s face, shadows playing across them in a way that would almost look eerie if Roxas didn’t know that the way his hands were twitching meant he was at a loss for words and was just a little put out about it.  
  
“So,” Axel starts again, and he smooths his twitching hands down the side of his coat, like he’s brushing away lint. “I guess you missed me?”  
  
Oh right, touching. That’s probably where he should start.  
  
He can count on one hand how many times he’s actually hugged Axel. It’s always been a careful arm around his shoulder, or an affectionate swat to Axel’s hair. A hand around his waist, fingertips digging into his hips the one time Axel had tugged him closer on the Clock Tower, so they were pressed together from shoulders to hips. A touch to his wrist and a hesitant touch to Axel’s cheek, once, and only because he was hurt.  
  
But he hugs Axel now, because that need to see if he’s real is back full force, making the pit of his stomach sour until he gets an arm on solid flesh. Axel’s taller than him, and for a minute, he’s not entirely sure where to set his hands. Hips may be too intimate, but he’d need to go up on the tips of his toes to get his arms around Axel’s shoulders. He settles for wrapping his arms around Axel’s waist, resting both hands against the small of his back, and pressing his face into the worn leather covering Axel’s chest.  
  
He smells like sweat and fire, that charcoal scent that Roxas used to get caught in the back of his throat for days while Axel was away. It makes his chest hurt, and the smell takes him back to days where they lounged around on Roxas’ bed-- days they spent exploring Agrabah and Atlantica and only pretending that they were there on business.  
  
Axel makes a noise in the back of his throat when Roxas touches him, not quite a gasp and not quite a shudder-- just a little intake of air that makes Roxas shake with emotion. He breathes in and that lump is still in his throat, choking him and telling him that he needs more. That he needs to tug Axel in as close as possible and never let him go. So Roxas sighs and ghosts his hands up the curve of Axel’s spine so he can fist his hands in the fabric against his shoulderblades.  
  
He’s worried that Axel won’t touch _him_ back. That the need to touch and breathe and hold is just him overreacting, over-encumbered by his new heart. But then Axel breathes out, a whoosh of air that ruffles the curls against Roxas’ left ear, and drapes his arms around Roxas’s shoulders, sliding his hands down Roxas’ back to clutch at the fabric against his shoulderblades, mirroring Roxas’ own hold.  
  
They stay there like that, in the dim light of the TARDIS, and breathe each other in.  
  
.  
  
The aftermath of the hug is the faintest bit awkward. While the room had been choked with emotion at the time, the second they pulled away, things had gotten a bit... awkward. This was uncharted territory, brand new waters, and Roxas didn’t know how deep they ran. His heart wanted to keep touching Axel, possibly forever, and there had been a moment, when Axel had pulled away, his eyes soft and his body relaxed and happy that Roxas thought about kissing him.  
  
He would have, maybe. Probably. But then Axel had cleared his throat and the moment was broken.  
  
Now, Roxas is attempting to show Axel their rooms, pointing out the library, the kitchen, the aether, and the wardrobe as they pass them, trying not to stammer. They’re at Roxas’ room by the time that it occurs to him that maybe Axel won’t want a room with him. They hadn't ever really shared rooms at the castle, just traipsed back and forth between each others quite a lot, and maybe Axel would like a room of his own?  
  
And why had he assumed Axel would be sleeping with him? There had been looks and unspoken promises and countless sunsets, but they’d never shared a bed. Contrary to what Larxene thought, they weren’t really lovers. Not then. Dozens of missed opportunities, but the words had never been spoken.  
  
They shuffle around a bit in the door to Roxas’ room,, awkward and unsure and a little bit scared, and Roxas is just figuring out how to ask if Axel would prefer bunkbeds, separate rooms, or Roxas’ bed when Axel heaves a noise of frustration and angles Roxas’ chin toward him.  
  
His heart doesn’t have time to start pounding before Axel slides their lips together.  
  
.  
  
(Axel’s fine with sharing Roxas’ bed. And his shower. And his teacup.  
  
Axel’s actually okay with sharing a lot of things.)  
  
.  
  
The Doctor wakes them in the morning with a loud knock to the door and a cheerful call of, “Now, I’ve given you two enough time to exchange fluids and bond profoundly. Come down to breakfast. Roxas, you know that the TARDIS makes the best tea for you.”  
  
The footsteps outside of the door suggest that he’s meandering off towards the kitchens, but then they stop, and he calls back worriedly, “And clothed, please! I had enough naked teatime when Jack was around.”  
  
Roxas buries his face in the covers, mortified, and Axel laughs against the back of his neck.  
  
It’s the best morning Roxas has ever had.  
  
.  
The planet turns out to be a bust, though they do spend a week or so in jail because Axel reminds the people of some corrupt judge that jumped planet when they caught on to him.  
  
It takes some explaining to get out of prison, and once they do, the planet is in the middle of a revolution which threatens the whole of creation.  
  
So they fix that.  
  
And then they go search another planet.  
  
.  
  
They look and look and look and eventually, it becomes less of them _actually_ looking and more of them trying to save the universe while keeping an eye out for spare hearts.  
  
The thing is, finding a heart is simple. Time is full of hearts- real, fake, plastic, machine- there’s actually a heart in the Gozafon galaxy made entirely of shrapnel- but they're all _transplants_ , meant to fill the void where a failing heart sits.  
  
There are no hearts for the heartless, no starter kit- no way to grow your own heart in 30 days. Human beings function on the assumption that if one is living, one has one’s own heart. Roxas doesn't entirely know what kind of weird pseudo magic encompasses a nobodies existence and makes it _possible_ for their blood to keep rushing without an orifice to pump it along, but it's making things damned difficult right about now.  
  
Roxas shares his heart with Sora. He knows this. Can even feel Sora on the slow days, when they're all reclining about the TARDIS, not thinking about warp stars or wayward space ships, just relaxing-- the Doctor sauntering around the library muttering to himself about pancakes and how they need to visit the 31st century, Axel investigating the bathtub and its many products while Roxas reclines on the chaise a few feet away, flicking the pages of his book and valiantly ignoring Axel’s attempts to both splash him and cajole him into the tub as well.  
  
But Sora is Sora. He’s like a hyperactive rabbit in the back of Roxas’ head, a television channel that he can’t turn off- too far away for the thoughts to be clear, but something there. Something shared. He imagines that it's similar to twins- two embryo separated, but the link remaining.  
  
Lea is dead. Finding Lea- even if they knew what to do with him once they found him--would be too risky.  
  
Sora was a heartless, and Kairi brought him back into the light. Who knows where the heartless that used to be Lea is, if it's even still alive.  
  
He doesn't know.  
  
They don't know.  
  
So they wait, and keep both eyes open.  
  
.  
  
As a distraction, the Doctor makes them go on a vacation.  
  
They take Axel to Paris. Paris in the 1400s, to be precise. The Feast of Fools, the Doctor tells them, is really quite fascinating. Roxas thinks that it's actually rather offensive, but then- well, he knows better than to tell the Doctor that when he's got _that look_ in his eyes.  
  
And okay, mostly he'd agreed to it because it's a good excuse to shove Axel into the Doctor's wardrobe and wrestle him into a jester's outfit, but Roxas isn't telling them that either.  
  
The festival, as it turns out, really is offensive. Oh, at first it holds up to the Doctor's claim of brilliance- the Doctor decks himself out in scarves and earrings and brightly colored outfits that Roxas is positive have seen better days while Roxas manages to find a costume that isn't too grating to the eyes. The bracelets and the headdress jingle a little bit too much, and they annoy the hell out of him, making his arms itch. But when Axel sees him, he grins, huge and happy, so Roxas keeps them and tries not to feel like too big of an idiot.  
  
The festival is also a great excuse to let Axel have a bit of fun. Jester's tricks are laughed at in this era- entertainment rather than a source of fear- and the moment that Axel realizes he can play with _fire_ beneath the hot Parisian sun he gleefully sets his arms alight. The crowd cheers and Axel is grinning, the Doctor whistling beside Roxas as they watch Axel set the air on fire- watch the elaborate loops and how Axel steals a pole from someone and lights both ends with a flick of his wrist. It's like he was born to this- and maybe in some ways he was.  
  
(Roxas remembers the way he'd come to life as a Nobody, ultraviolet light setting the grass on fire, blooming behind his eyes. Roxas had wondered if he was blind before he'd even really known what being blind _was_. He wonders if it had happened to Axel like that, if Axel had woken up on fire, rising from the ashes like a phoenix.)  
  
It's nice to drink and laugh with the rest of the crowd, to watch people with hideous masks compete for a demeaning crown.  
  
The gypsies are all friendly- perhaps a little bit too friendly considering that the prettiest of them waltzes over to Axel and dances with him amongst the embers, red and glittering skirts hiked up to her thighs, bangles jangling about her person, her smooth cheeks dimpled with laughter.  
  
But things go sour soon enough- the good cheer vanishing, replaced with a storm of anger and hate. It's _sad_ in a way that makes Roxas' new heart _burn_ .  
  
The Doctor is still trying to teach him some complex game when they notice the silence, and Roxas' eyes seek out Axel automatically. He finds him quickly, standing in the square with his teeth clenched together and licks of flame still smoldering along his pale arms- all traces of laughter gone, just _anger_ , so when Roxas sidles up next to him a few minutes later and Axel reaches for his hand, Roxas doesn't hesitate to slip them together.  
  
The crowd is jeering around them, grabbing for rotten fruit and ropes and when they strap the man- the hunchback, to the wheel, Roxas doesn't even want to _look_ at the Doctor.  
  
His fingers itch for the keyblade and maybe the Doctor had smiled at him when they'd arrived, grinning all puppyish but shaking his finger in Roxas' face when he'd said, "Now remember, don't interfere," but it's not _normal_ to stand by and watch. The keyblade is in his hands before he can talk himself out of it, and he's slipping up to the stage- cutting the ropes just as the pretty gypsy woman from before is starting towards them.  
  
He almost doesn't listen to the enraged shouts of the judge or the gypsy woman's hissed words. His heart's pounding in his chest, and he's so _sad_ ; he doesn't understand- and then Axel is there. Axel with a sneer for the judge and a cloth to wipe the pulpy insides of rotten fruit from the man's face. The Doctor is somewhere to the right, whispering something to the woman as Axel helps Roxas heft him to his feet. It's hard, see, because the man is _heavy_ , oddly muscled in a way that you wouldn't quite guess.  
  
By now Roxas is used to running, the thrill and fear of it, the thumping of feet against the ground- and when Axel switches places with the gypsy girl, her arms to help Roxas guide the poor guy to safety, he doesn't need the Doctor's hissed "run," to prompt him. He doesn't really get it at first, but then he feels the heat at his back and realizes what it is- a smokescreen to ease their way.  
  
Moments later, Axel is breathing harshly at his side, a smudge of soot dusted across his nose. He grimaces, like there's a bad taste caught in the back of his throat and Roxas lets out a harsh, shuddering breath, listening to their feet on the cobblestone, the slapping of their shoes as they ascend the stairs, anything to distract him.  
  
They come to a stop, Axel pressing close to him, glancing around like some kind of overgrown guard dog while the Doctor fiddles with the Cathedral door, sonic screwdriver humming away in his hands. The girl is scowling at the sky as if it's to blame for all this, and Roxas remembers that not all men are good. A heart they may have, but seldom do they _use_ it.  
  
The girl tries to manage a smile and a faint curtsy when she introduces herself, “Esmeralda,” she says, and the man frowns shyly at the floorboards, dripping rotten food, and stammers out _his_ name.  
  
Later, the Doctor will rave about silly prejudices and both commend and berate Roxas for his interference in less than a sentence. Later they will meet gargoyles that talk and the Doctor will make a terrible noise in the back of his throat and ask them if they plan to kill anyone or perhaps transport them back in time.  
  
They will see the Court of Miracles and watch Paris burn, and throughout it all, Axel will be at his side- even when the world gets its happy ending.  
  
And even when he's grinning up at Axel, pressing sloppy kisses to his cheeks, he still can't get that image of hate out of his head.  
  
Maybe the heartless had it right. Some men don't deserve hearts.  
  
.  
  
Worlds and worlds and worlds and _Welcome to Rapture_ , which really, if he never hears those words again, it will be too soon.  
  
.  
  
It starts mostly because Roxas tends to get left behind with the scientists a lot. Well, it's not that he gets left behind, not exactly- it's just, the Doctor and Axel are both very exuberant individuals, and in the face of their mutual excitement towards the unknown, Roxas doesn't stand a chance. So it's often that with an apologetic kiss (from Axel) and a grinned "Allonsy!" (from the Doctor) he's left behind to mind the humans.  
  
(And really, most of the time, they _need_ a babysitter, like the time in Capua when they thought it would be a good idea to catch the bad guys themselves and left Roxas tied to a chair. The fact that they were eviscerated messily makes Roxas feel a little bit guilty for still being mad about the whole tying up business, but it makes him realize that he has to be on guard at all times.)  
  
(And then there was that other time on Axis III, but he won't even get into that.)  
  
And when you get down to it, it's mostly chance that the first few batches of humans that he's tasked to watch over happen to be the significantly smarter portion of the human race. That first time, while the Doctor and Axel are off trying to convince a giant tortoise with the world on its back to _keep_ the world on its back and he's meandering around the science stations, it comes as something of a shock.  
  
He's tapping the floor with his keyblade when he happens to glance over a nearby scientists shoulder, just to see what they're working on, and well- that was it. Up until then he'd only known about space through the Doctor's rambling and the glimpses of half formed planets out of the TARDIS' window. He hadn't actually known that there were different types of suns, that the surfaces of some planets were uninhabitable.  
  
When Axel and the Doctor get back, he's engrossed in a discussion about dwarf stars with the leading scientist (Professor Blackwell, you can call me Ned) and several of the assistants are pulling up charts and bar graphs and _statistics_ about a new galaxy they'd discovered--  
  
The book that Ned gives him isn't perfect, after all, they're only in the 22nd century, but Roxas hugs it close to his chest and grins all the way back to the TARDIS.  
  
.  
  
It becomes something of a habit, after that- collecting books on astrophysics and all the many and varied theories of relativity and the engineering of space ships- the mechanics of time and the beginnings of that knowledge the Time Lords mastered. There's a book from the 65th century that's almost entirely in early Meso-Xiangese that Roxas gets from a girl that Axel saved from tumorous parasites. He makes the Doctor waste a month teaching him the language, ignoring the offers of, "Roxas, I could just _read_ it to you," because when he picks up the book and starts to read, it's worth all the whining.  
  
Sometimes, when Roxas is curled up on his and Axel's bed with a book and the Doctor's poking about the hallway, the Time Lord will stick his head in the room, take one look at the book Roxas is reading and promptly scoff, saying "Oh please, Norman-Fasco got it all wrong. Let me teach you a little something about dark matter."  
  
This is usually followed by a night long discussion about the universe, and if he's really lucky, the Doctor will get so enthusiastic about it that he'll roll his eyes, extend a hand, and say, "Here, let me just show you."  
  
Roxas will never get over the peculiarity of seeing space out of the TARDIS. It's not quite like those nights that he'd spent watching Sora hiss under his breath and gun down Heartless ships, not at all. Watching a world below you and having the Doctor slowly point out bits of facts and tidbits of information- it's like nothing Roxas has ever known.  
  
And it makes sense. He was born as a Nobody, with the element of light at his side, born smelling of carbon and radiation, feeling the gamma rays and breathing infrared- and then later he was reborn in space- given his heart and his body and the soul that he's mostly sure he still shares a little bit with Sora right here, in this space ship, with this alien. It only makes sense that he'd want to know more.  
  
.  
  
As many adventures as they have, mind-shattering terror and hostage situations and plants that want to get a bit frisky, their trips are always a bit more than the danger. Yes, they're fascinating and brilliant and awe inspiring in a way that is _actually_ impossible to explain, but the little details are the most important to him- like the bubbles clinging to the inside of Axel's wrist and the way that the Doctor has to keep pushing up his glasses whenever he reads over Roxas' shoulder like some kind of school teacher. Like how sometimes the Doctor will yawn and tell Roxas to take over, meandering down the hallways for a bath and leaving Roxas alone with Axel and a purring time machine.  
  
Details- they stick to the insides of Roxas' eyelids like barnacles, something worth remembering.  
  
.  
  
The first time Roxas had tried to implement laundry day, the Doctor had laughed at him. Though, considering the fact that he and Axel had been fully immersed in a debate about whether or not the Time Agency was actually an acceptable career choice at the time, he might have been laughing at Axel.  
  
And then, fourteen (hundred) days later, Roxas had brought it up again. This time it wasn’t just because Roxas was in need of clean underwear and socks, but rather because they’d gotten back from a particularly grueling adventure involving mud monsters, swamps, and pixiedust-happy fairies and the Doctor had just dropped his mud encrusted, pixie dust sprinkled suit in the corner of the TARDIS and left it there.  
  
“You can’t just leave that there! It already smells!”  
  
The Doctor glanced at him over his shoulder, an eyebrow raised with incredulity. “No it won’t. And anyway- it’ll be clean when I get back.”  
  
Except for how it hadn’t been.  
  
Roxas has a sneaking suspicion that the TARDIS likes to shove all the Doctor’s dank and smelly suits right into the Vortex when he isn’t looking and just makes him new ones instead, because when they do get back, the suit _is_ clean, but it’s also sporting brown pinstripes rather than blue.  
  
What a waste of clothing.  
  
.  
  
Roxas is halfheartedly talking to the TARDIS about their latest expedition, muttering expletives beneath his breath about the natives while occasionally cooing about what a good job the Doctor did at stopping the manmade volcano, when Axel laughs from behind him.  
  
He rolls his eyes and doesn't turn around. He's far from ashamed when it comes to his mostly one-sided conversations with the Doctor's space ship. After all, she's far more intelligent than most humans he's had the pleasure of conversing with.  
  
Another breath and Axel's weight presses up against his back, arms draping over his shoulders like he's some kind of octopus, his breath hot against Roxas' ear when he breathes, "Talking to the ship, Roxas? If you needed company, I wasn't doing much."  
  
Roxas sniffs. "You were sleeping."  
  
"So I was."  
  
"You needed it."  
  
"Not as badly as you do if you're reduced to conversing with a ship."  
  
Roxas finally turns away from the controls so he can grin at Axel over his shoulder. "Be careful," he whispers, "She'll shock you again."  
  
Axel scoffs and flaps a hand dismissively. "Trust me, as long as she doesn't lock me out like she did in Fesmaporia, we're fine."  
  
The TARDIS makes a shrill humming noise and that's all it takes for Axel to look nervous. Roxas laughs.  
  
"You can't exactly blame her, Axel. You set her on fire-"  
  
"It was an accident! It's not my fault that you were withholding the Cheerios like some kind of Cheerio-hoarding tyrant. And anyway," he adds, lowering his voice a fraction, "She's a greedy wretch and she knows it. She wants you all to herself."  
  
"So, let me get this straight," he starts drolly, "you set the console on fire when you were trying to wrestle the cereal away from me, and you're blaming it on the fact that the space ship wants me all to herself."  
  
"No! I set the console on fire because you didn't cave like a normal human being when I brought out the tickling." A pause. "I'm blaming her wanting you all to herself on the fact that she wants you all to herself."  
  
Roxas snorts and taps idly against the small television hidden amongst wiring, peering at the numbers scrawling across it. He's going to ignore that last bit.  
  
"So, if tickling fails, one must resort to fire. Wait, stop- I need to write this down. I'll call it something dreadful like-" he pauses and leans forward a bit to spin the dampener down to seven, "-'Why Axel should never be trusted with small children.'" Axel makes a noise behind him, something like a protest and Roxas has to grin, wriggling back and rubbing up against Axel's front. The noise of protest fades.  
  
Roxas brightens. "I'll even publish it! I'm sure the Doctor has contacts somewhere. That way I'm not the only one who knows how to babysit you."  
  
Axel growls a bit and tugs Roxas' ear between his teeth, sudden, grinding up against Roxas almost helplessly. "Maybe I like it that you're the only one who knows how to babysit me," he purrs, lips brushing up against Roxas' neck in short, little kisses.  
  
Roxas laughs again, and his heart feels a bit like soaring, like if he had pixie dust he'd be hovering right here and now, in the control room of the TARDIS with Axel all over him. "Age kink now? Jeez, Axel, I don't really know if I'm into that."  
  
He turns, because it's impossible not to- with Axel right there, pupils blown wide and a smile playing around the edges of his mouth.  
  
Roxas had learned quickly that being in love with a fully functional heart in his chest is a little overwhelming, his breath coming short and emotion clogging up his throat, feelings pounding along to the tempo of his heart. Exhilaration, joy, longing, want, want, _want-_  
  
And the feeling doesn’t go away. Every kiss feels like that- every hug, cuddle, grope, and fuck feels like something impossible, something out of fairytales.  
  
When Axel pulls back, his smile has lost all the sharp edges, softening so much that it's reached his eyes- making them crinkle at the corners. Roxas wants to drag them back into their room and kiss him senseless, maybe forget to be quiet for once and laugh about how red the Doctor will go when he sees them next.  
  
But the Doctor is tired, and Roxas has a ship to pilot.  
  
He grins at Axel.  
  
"So, want me to teach you how to drive?" he asks and relishes in the way his heart flutters when Axel lights up.

 

.

  
When Roxas was first shown his room, before Axel- after Sora had left with a last hug for him and a scowl and a growled, "you better keep him safe," for the Doctor, it was pretty blank.  
  
There was a bed- a queen, thankfully- (the Doctor had seemed to be under the impression that bunk beds were best), a small desk, and a dresser, all shoved in various corners. But that was it.  
  
Over time, the room fills up.  
  
The day that the Doctor takes them to see the Star Wars premiere they come back to sheets that have little light sabers all over it along with an official _Empire Strikes Back_ comforter. A couple days later Axel discovers chemicals- and they come back to a starter chemistry set. (Which was really a _terrible_ idea on the TARDIS’ part.)  
  
It goes on and on like that- them discovering that they like something, and suddenly, it appearing in their room like magic.  
  
(And seriously, it was uncomfortable enough when the TARDIS had seen fit to stock their nightstand with lube and condoms, but a few weeks later when she started leaving sex toys in odd places? Yeah. Awkward.)  
  
To Axel's endless amusement, the wardrobe does the same thing- taking note of their tastes like some kind of catalogue and equipping the _galleries_ of racked clothes with their own personal preferences. She stores them in the secondary wardrobe, closer to the front so that they don't have to go trekking up and down the stairs, fiddling through the endless assortment of increasingly odd clothing every time they want a pair of pants.  
  
They have a nice system set up, one that Roxas thinks that he might understand a bit better than the Doctor in the long run. The TARDIS keeps them safe and happy, and always sends them where they need to go, even when it isn’t where they _want_ to go.  
  
And then, the TARDIS goes on strike.  
  
According to Axel, the Doctor must have done something to offend her again, because "he's always doing these little things- getting himself in trouble and forgetting to thank her for pressing his suits."  
  
According to the Doctor, it must have been Axel. "He's probably set her on fire. Again," he says, wry.  
  
As far as Roxas is concerned, they both look guilty, neither have apologized, and the TARDIS is refusing to stock fresh food in the kitchen. And the rooms are always inexplicably messy.  
  
"Apologize," he finally snaps.  
  
It's like they've both perfected the kicked puppy look while he wasn’t looking. Hell, they've probably started practicing on each other. He sighs. "I don't care who did it- I really don't. You are both going to apologize right now so she doesn't lock us out, and then you're going to come shopping with me."  
  
"But-"  
  
"Apologize."  
  
The whispered "Sorry, dear," and "yeah, sorry," make him smile a little and the TARDIS hums with him, the lights brightening like they're already forgiven.  
  
"Now," he says, and winds a scarf that he'd found in the wardrobe earlier around his neck. "We are going to go fetch milk and orange juice and whatever else you might think we need, and when we get back we're going to go visit Destiny Islands."  
  
The Doctor looks like he's tempted to add something about how they were supposed to be going to the Olympics ("Naked men running around like children! It's ridiculous! I'm sure Axel will love it!") so Roxas adds, "I miss Sora."  
  
Axel's eyes soften a bit and the Doctor deflates. Roxas finishes shrugging into his coat.  
  
"Now, shall we?"  
  
.  
  
They pick up milk, orange juice, carrots, and a ridiculous amount of frozen dinners. And then somehow, the Doctor manages to run into some old nemesis halfway down aisle 5 and they have to sprint back to the TARDIS.  
  
They can't even go to the grocery store without running into trouble. Go figure.  
  
.  
  
Destiny Islands is warm. Warm and lovely in a way that Roxas doesn't really remember. Of course, he supposes, he's never _really_ been there. He's always been there because Sora was there, looking at the world through his eyes. It only makes sense that things would be a bit different when seeing it through his own eyes. The water is a clear blue that makes him think of Riku's eyes, cooler than he remembered too, and he has the sudden urge to kick off his shoes and take off into the surf.  
  
Probably the Sora in him, he reasons.  
  
Kairi's the one who greets them, wrapping Roxas in sun bronzed arms and giggling into his hair, saying, "We missed you, Roxas!" before passing right past him and on towards Axel, who she pins with a look of suspicion. Axel swallows.  
  
“Kairi,” he nods.  
  
“Axel,” she acknowledges. Then, “Well, you seem better at least. I guess you found what you were looking for then?” she grins, nodding towards Roxas.  
  
Axel’s eyes flicker over to his, and he flushes, shuffling uncomfortably on the hot sand. “I think technically he’s the one who found me, but-” he glances back over to Roxas and smiles, “-yeah, I found him.”  
  
The Doctor clears his throat noisily behind them, a sound that is stuck somewhere between horrifically annoying and catastrophically appalling. When Roxas turns though, he’s grinning, twiddling his thumbs in front of him and rocking back and forth on his heels.  
  
“Not that this isn’t very moving- no, no, don’t laugh, Roxas, that isn’t nice- that was very touching, Axel, really.” Kairi giggles and the Doctor’s attention shifts to her. He beams. “But if you don’t mind, I need some sunscreen before I start to look a bit like a lobster, and we don’t want that. I don’t visit beaches much, see, but when I do... well, let’s just say that this particular body doesn’t tan.”  
  
.  
  
Apparently, the looming threat of death by UV rays has no effect whatsoever on the Doctor trying to have fun on a beach. In fact, the only thing more annoying than the Doctor flouncing about the beach in board shorts declaring that they start random games of volleyball, is _Sora_ bouncing about the beach after him, making a point of yanking Roxas and Axel out of the shade of a nearby palm and _making_ them join in.  
  
Sora and the Doctor together is kind of like shoving two ADHD toddlers into an enclosed space with lots and lots of breakable objects. They’re unstoppable.  
  
The game itself is a bit of a disaster once Sora and Riku decide to cheat by using their keyblades and Axel catches the ball on fire. A free for all involving keyblades, chakrams, and sonic screwdrivers follows, and after nearly thirty minutes of torture, Kairi manages to extricate Roxas from the complicated sport.  
  
The sand is just a few degrees too warm beneath his feet, and Roxas watches their toes curl into it as Kairi drags him down in front of the old battered boards of the seaside shack. For a few minutes, they just watch the others play- the Doctor teaming up with Sora and launching a vigorous assault on Riku and Axel.  
  
“You’re happy, aren’t you?” she asks, and he tears his attention away from how low Axel’s shorts are sitting on his hips.  
  
“What?”  
  
She smiles and tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. “Happy- with them. You are, right?”  
  
He thinks about it for a minute, because ‘til now it’s just been a fact. Of course he’s happy. He has Axel and all of time and space before him- what’s to dislike? He glances back at them, to where the Doctor has somehow procured a squirtgun and is proceeding to douse Riku with salt water. He’s laughing about it, white teeth bared in a happy grin, acting more like a four year old than a nine hundred year old member of one of the most intelligent races in the whole of time.  
  
“Sora told us about it, y’know. When he got back.” Kairi’s playing with the sand that’s clinging to her shins, tracing symbols through the glittering grains. “He told us that some madman with a box had done something to him and that you were gone. That you had your own body and were looking for something important.”  
  
She giggles, and flicks some sand at him. “I knew you were looking for him, but Riku didn’t believe me. He said it was impossible.”  
  
Roxas eyes Riku from across the beach. They’d never gotten along- not really. The only time they’d been face to face, they’d kicked he shit out of each other and Riku had kidnapped him and stuck him in a fake world. He’d seen Riku afterwards, through Sora’s eyes. Seen the way that he cared for Sora, more now that he knew what it was like to lose him. He wasn’t all that bad.  
  
“Riku should be the last person to talk about impossible things. He wanted to get to a new world on a rickety old raft.” The sun is at it’s peak in the sky, and Roxas shifts uncomfortably in the sand, feeling the salt water dry against his shoulders.  
  
Kairi laughs and draws a circle in the sand between them. “Well, once upon a time, we all thought that.”  
  
She’s adding details to the circle; large geometric shapes and little squiggles. For a moment, she’s quiet.  
  
“Sometimes,” she starts, looking up at him for a moment before returning her gaze to her creation, “I feel like I’m the only one who didn’t get an adventure. Like I missed out on this big event, just sitting back and waiting for the boys to get home. I regret it, a bit.”  
  
The circle starts to look more familiar- a glimpse of Twilight Town from far away. Suddenly, he aches a bit, for those friends that were never really his; who knew him only as that weird kid in the black coat who asked weird questions, not _Roxas_ , the boy who helped them with their homework and helped them save up money to go to the beach.  
  
“And then I remember that they’re here now, and I don’t really need an adventure in my life. They’re handfuls enough.”  
  
Roxas watches her fingers, slim and pale- flecks of sand clinging to the underside of her thumb. He thinks about how she must have felt, the island coming back to life around her, watching Sora fade away. How she must have felt when she realized she’d forgotten his name. How she felt that day, when something inside of Roxas had teased, _starts with an ‘S’..._  
  
He stares at her, and thinks that she’s stronger than any of them know. “But if they left again, you’d follow them, right?”  
  
She looks up at that, and her grin is sharp and blinding and all teeth. “Of course I would. I wouldn’t let them leave without me.”  
  
.  
  
They eat on the pirate ship- melon that Kairi’s brought from home and some not-turkey that Axel digs out of the cooler in the TARDIS. The Doctor walks about the ship, frowning and gesticulating and grousing about where the ship could have come from.  
  
“My mom says it’s been here since her dad was a kid,” Sora puts in, wiping melon juice from his chin. The Doctor points a celery stick covered in peanut butter at him and shakes it.  
  
“That isn’t the point! The design is all wrong! Just look at it- there’s no way this is from the island-”  
  
“Doctor!” Roxas says loudly, pulling away from the cage of Axel’s arms to tug him down by the suit jacket. The Doctor turns wide eyes on him, as if surprised to suddenly be sitting on the floor. “Just sit down and eat. The ship won’t eat us- promise.”  
  
They eat.  
  
.  
  
The ship doesn’t actually try to eat them, but when the Doctor insists on getting below deck, the infestation of small spiky aliens try to.  
  
Only the Doctor.  
  
.  
  
“They were harmless- it isn’t like you were really in danger.”  
  
Riku scowls and pulls a barb from his hair.  
  
Somewhere, Sora is laughing.  
  
“You only surprised it- Roxas, tell him that they’re harmless!”  
  
Roxas hides a smile behind his hand, and pats the small body of one of the creatures. It purrs.  
  
“They’re herbivores, Riku. It just... liked your hair a bit too much.”  
  
Riku grumbles.  
.  
  
They don't stay the night, though Kairi assures them that her house has room. The sun sets gold and pink and violet here, and even though Roxas has seen dozens of sunsets, he thinks he likes Destiny Islands most of all.  
  
Axel sits beside him on the little dock, kicking his feet in the waves. The others are still on the beach- Riku bickering with the Doctor about how medicine changes in the future and Sora talking quietly with Kairi near the shoreline.  
  
Axel is warm, pressed up against his side- faintly damp and smelling of salt. He has a bit of a sunburn, the worst of it around his shoulders and spread in blotchy patches across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, and it's something- that little proof that this is real.  
  
"You're going to freckle if you keep that up," he whispers, bumping their shoulders together. Axel glances away from the sunset for a moment and smiles.  
  
"For a day like today, I think I'll risk a few freckles." He kicks at another wave and sends the water up to spatter their knees. "And besides," he adds, still smiling, "I hear freckles are kisses from your guardian angel."  
  
Roxas snorts. "Warning signs, more like. 'Stop while you're ahead, pale one. This way lies the cancer of the skin.'"  
  
Axel flicks him on the ear, but he's grinning, so there's no real bite.  
  
"Hey Roxas-" he starts, and Roxas cuts him off with a kiss.  
  
He doesn't need to know why the sun sets red.  
  
.  
  
Sora hugs him goodbye- a tight embrace that brings to mind brotherly affection that he never had the chance to familiarize himself with. He hugs Axel too, though a bit less enthusiastically than he'd grabbed Roxas. The Doctor though- no, hugging isn't enough. Not for Sora. Instead, Sora lunges at him- giggling and happy, hooks his arms around the back of the Doctor's neck, and plants a large, sloppy kiss against the Time Lord's mouth.  
  
He draws back long enough to whisper something in the Doctor's ear, and whatever it is, it makes the Doctor eyes go soft- the surprise fading away.  
  
And then he's bouncing over to an irritated looking Riku and an amused looking Kairi, sliding his hands into each of theirs and laughing when Kairi demands a kiss of her own. He dips her low, broad hands spread against the small of her back, and when he kisses her, it's nothing like the one he gave the Doctor. When he draws back, both of them smiling and pink cheeked, Riku's scowling- and somehow, Roxas is only a little bit astonished when he gives Riku one of his own.  
  
.  
  
"What did he say to you? Before?" Roxas asks later, curious. They're sitting around the console, sipping tea and coffee and nibbling on some of Sora's mothers homemade sugar cookies. The Doctor looks away from a wire he's idly toying with and smiles, cookie crumbs clinging to the corner of his mouth.  
  
"That he's glad you're happy."  
  
.  
  
Skip, skip, skip- the record player skips on an on, fractured and broken- never quite whole, but perfect anyway. Axel's chest is still quiet, but the emotion in his eyes speaks volumes.  
  
.  
  
(Somewhere, a star is being born.)  
  
.  
  
They’re in the Quallison quadrant chasing down a petty crook who plans on taking over the universe with a garbage ship (“Really! A ship full of _rubbish_! What does he plan on doing? Threaten us with a couple hundred kilos of trash until we cower in fear? HA!”) when Axel gets sick. The coughing starts when they’re crawling _through_ the rubbish heap, so it’s easily explained away as a reaction to the garbage. Allergies and what not.  
  
He’s still a bit under the weather when they make it back to the TARDIS, flushed with victory despite the general smell that’s lingering about their persons, but when the Doctor asks, he just waves them away.  
  
“It’s all right,” he sighs, pressing a messy kiss to Roxas’ curls. “I’m just- I’ll have a bath. It’ll be fine. Sleep. Rest. All this running is kind of exhausting.”  
  
The Doctor and Roxas share a glance. Axel loves the running. Just last week he’d said it was better than Martha Stewart’s chocolate cake. Not a statement to be taken lightly.  
  
He frowns grumpily when he sees their expressions and huffs. “It’s _fine._ Promise. I just need to... not suck so much. Feel sucky. Whatever.”  
  
And with that, he meanders off towards the bathrooms.  
  
The Doctor looks at Roxas for a moment before rolling his eyes. “Well, what are you doing? Shoo! Shoo! Better make sure he doesn’t drown.”  
  
Roxas goes to do just that, because he doesn’t really need the Doctor’s permission to go shampoo his boyfriend’s hair when he’s feeling sick.  
  
He doesn’t drown, even though there’s a minute where he drops into sleep, sliding down into the bubbles until his head’s resting on Roxas’ chest just above the waterline.  
  
When they’re cocooned in their blankets, Roxas asks again.  
  
“And you’re sure you’re okay?”  
  
Axel just snuffles sleepily in reply and kisses the edge of Roxas’ ear. “Never better, Rox.”  
  
.  
  
The next morning Roxas wakes up to Axel wheezing into his shoulder- great gasping breaths and sounds emitting from his nose that are vaguely reminiscent to a flock of Canadian geese. It isn’t the best sound in the world to wake up to, and for a moment he seriously contemplates smothering Axel with a pillow and just going back to sleep.  
  
The TARDIS hums quietly around him, quiet. He can’t hear the Doctor.  
  
He spends several minutes watching the shadows play over the ceiling, light spilling in from the hall- listens to Axel breathe.  
  
When the Doctor pokes his head in a few minutes later, brows near his hairline, Roxas just shakes his head and smiles wryly. “So,” he starts, taking a moment to brush a few strands of hair away from Axel’s face, “know of a planet with some decent soup?”  
  
.  
  
As it turns out, the Doctor happens to know _many_ places with good soup. They get the soup from Laerta XVI and some medicine from a little planet nearby. Apparently, with all the advances in medicine over the centuries, the common cold has managed to evade destruction.  
  
For his part, Axel mostly just complains.  
  
“But I don’t _like_ chicken noodle.”  
  
and  
  
“Roooooooxas, I huuuuuurt.”  
  
and  
  
“Make it stop.”  
  
and  
  
“But I don’t want to shower alone.”  
  
The last, is a bit more endearing than irritating, which is why Roxas actually lets himself get talked beneath the spray so Axel can rub all over him and wheeze happily against his neck.  
  
The Doctor learns to distance himself from Axel after two excruciating days of Axel being the most insufferable asshole in the entire world. He whines and moans and buries himself in a heap of quilts that magically appear on their bed, as if even the TARDIS is sick of him bitching about how she can never quite get the temperature just right.  
  
Most of the time, Roxas stays in bed with him, occasionally slinking out into the kitchen to get procure tea and/or sustenance. Sometimes during the night, when Axel’s breathing is a bit too loud, he’ll creep down the hall and into the library, or into the Aether, where he’ll almost surely find the Doctor.  
  
The Doctor assures him that it’s just a bug- no real reason to worry, but Roxas does anyway.  
  
He worries.  
  
(Axel gets better just as Roxas is starting to sniffle. Figures.)  
  
.  
  
They run into Larxene once. It’s just the once, and it isn’t really Larxene anyways.  
  
The woman who Larxene once was is confident and charming, blonde hair in a wild tangle down her back and blue eyes sharp and too clever behind a pair of slim spectacles. She’s sarcastic and biting, and really, a bit of a bitch, but she helps them corral her fellow villagers away from town while the Doctor attempts to combat the gigantic man eating _teletubbies_ that have started walking around.  
  
Roxas stands next to her and watches as she bickers with her older brother (and what kind of name is Gaston, anyway?) and feels a smile crawl it’s way onto his face as the woman bares her teeth at the older man in a familiar snarl. Cowed, her brother backs down, and Larxene (not Larxene, not her- not really) grins and flops back against some tree roots with an old, leather bound book.  
  
He watches her until she notices, scowling and gesturing for him to join her.  
  
They talk about books and monsters and older brothers, and when the Doctor and Axel come back, Roxas finds that he almost wants to say something else to her. To warn her, maybe.  
  
The words are licking around his teeth, trying to find a way out, because she’s smiling at him and twirling straw yellow hair around her little finger and he doesn’t _want_ her to die.  
  
Axel gently grasps him by the wrist, and with a quiet goodbye, leads him away.  
  
Fixed points, the Doctor would say.  
  
Roxas wonders if she remembered them later- when she was Larxene. If she knew that they’d gotten their happy ending after all. If maybe that’s why she hated them so much.  
  
He joins the Doctor at the console and idly toys with a gear. Flips it forward- back- and again and again until the TARDIS makes something explode in warning.  
  
The Doctor asks him where he’d like to go, and he smiles over at Axel.  
  
“Anywhere.”  
  
.  
  
He doesn’t know how it happened. All he knows, is that one minute he was crouched next to Axel desperately avoiding stray bullets, and the next he was waking up next to a corpse.  
  
As if the corpse wasn’t enough to worry about, the place where he woke up was not only nowhere near Cardiff in the 1930s, but also appeared to be sporting three moons in the night sky.  
  
So, not Earth.  
  
Got it.  
  
Wherever he is, there isn’t just one corpse. There are dozens.  
  
And some of them seem to be moving.  
  
Roxas sighs. As a rule, he’s learned to accept that the Doctor has a very strict no guns policy. In the recent years-weeks-months-centuries that they’ve been aboard his ship, he seems to have made an exception for only keyblades and the occasional firestorm. But he’s not too fond of weapons.  
  
Axel likes to speculate that it’s because he’s trying to _not_ compensate for something in a strange Doctorish way.  
  
Roxas knows that it’s because the Doctor remembers how it feels to use them.  
  
All the same. There’s a woman with half of her face sloughing off of sharp yellow cheekbones in fatty gray chunks and the keyblade flinches away when he reaches for it. The corpse next to Roxas has a gun in his hand and a bullet between his eyes. He, thankfully, is not moving.  
  
So Roxas puts the thought of Doctor and his morals to one side and grabs the gun. Lines up a shot.  
  
Pulls the trigger.  
  
.  
  
It’s not that he doesn’t trust the Doctor to come get him. He does, implicitly. And even if the Doctor hadn’t wanted to come get him, there’s no way that Axel would have accepted it. He would get that look on his face, the stubborn one- scowl twisting his lips and jaw tensed up tight, and he wouldn’t accept no for an answer. He would come get Roxas, even if he had to drag the Doctor along behind him.  
  
It’s just that he likes to have a second option.  
  
The planet that he’s on is somewhere in the YRFJ quadrant, twenty-two hundred light years away from Earth. It has four moons, actually- not the three he’d seen before. The fourth had been hiding in the second’s shadow, and he hadn’t noticed it until the first sun had started to rise against the horizon- sending magenta and violet whirls throughout the sky.  
  
The lighting would have been pretty if it hadn’t cast a dim red glow over the already grizzly battlefield.  
  
Finding help is the first thing he does.  
  
The group of survivors are the ones who tell him where he is and exactly what is going on. He doesn’t stay with them for long, but it’s enough to realize that the entire planet is in the middle of a lockdown, and has been so for the past twenty four years.  
  
They tell him that they’re in the middle of white space- that the disease had crept onto their planet aboard a slave ship and that it had overrun them, same as it had all the neighboring planets.  
  
When he’d asked about disease control, they’d laughed at him. A woman with a plastic eye had grinned with two blackened teeth and said, “sonny, if ya’ think ya’ can control it, ya’ got a’notha thing comin’.”  
  
White Zones. Dead Space. Planets of the dead.  
  
Shuttles carted the disease between planets in the form of stowaways or rich folk with enough money to pull through a decent bribe. They always left in the hopes that other planets would have a cure, fighting to hold onto that last bit of humanity.  
  
Some turned on the way, and passed the virus through the ship. A ship of ravenous monsters, ever moving through space, just waiting for the one sorry soul unlucky enough to happen upon it.  
  
Others turned once they’d arrived, and from there, the disease would spread.  
  
Mostly, Roxas just figures that he needs to stay away from the teeth and the fluids.  
  
He can keep that up until the Doctor comes to get him.  
  
He can.  
  
.  
  
The thing is- months pass. Time passes and the gun starts to feel less of an unnecessary weight and more of an extension of his arm.  
  
The sight and smell of rotten flesh becomes commonplace.  
  
When he breathes, he can taste the stench of this world- decaying, rotting from the inside in a way that even the heartless had never managed. Some days, he wakes up to the taste of blood on his teeth and panics before he realizes that he’s chewed his tongue to a pulp while he’d slept.  
  
He rarely eats, and when he manages to get a hold of food, he has to pick the maggots and weevils out- shoo away the flies. The world is curdling around him like rotten milk and Roxas doesn’t know what to do.  
  
He isn’t exceedingly clever. He’s brave enough to be a keyblade master, strong enough to hold the monsters at bay. He’s smart enough to stay a few steps ahead of the average human, but what he _needs_ to be able to do is circumnavigate the stars. He needs a ship. A TARDIS.  
  
He misses the TARDIS.  
  
He misses the Doctor.  
  
He misses _Axel_.  
  
He waits some more.  
  
.  
  
A year passes, and the only thing that marks the anniversary is that Roxas takes out an entire nest.  
  
.  
  
Two years, six months, fourteen days, and a handful of seconds.  
  
Axel looks exhausted and terrified, but so overwhelmingly relieved that for a moment, Roxas forgets that he’s standing on top of an overturned confection stand, covered in three months worth of blood and grime. There are still walkers around, but they’re over fifty feet away and Axel and the TARDIS are within eye sight.  
  
He runs, gun slapping his side, a vice grip on the axe he’d gotten his hand on a couple weeks ago. He cuts them down as he goes, pretending that the axe in his hand is his keyblade and the creatures dropping beneath each blow are heartless- that they don’t have human faces, and that the Doctor won’t be horrified when he sees first hand what Roxas has done.  
  
Fifty meters.  
  
Twenty five.  
  
Ten.  
  
Five.  
  
He collapses into Axel’s arms and lets their momentum take them past the doors and into the TARDIS. The door shuts behind them and the TARDIS purrs, as if welcoming him back.  
  
Roxas presses his face up against the nape of Axel’s neck and tries not to cry.  
  
.  
  
It’s been two weeks since he disappeared.  
  
Two weeks.  
  
“It was a Rift, see. Well- The Rift, rather.”  
  
“Roxas, please. We’re sorry.”  
  
Two weeks.  
  
Eventually, Axel asks him how long he’d been there.  
  
Roxas looks at him.  
  
He feels older, he’s pretty sure. His body’s grown- not much, but enough. He’s taller now, and his voice is ever so slightly deeper. There are scars pockmarking his body that hadn’t been there before, some pink and fresh while others are moon-white. There are bruises beneath his eyes and Roxas has been able to count each of his ribs since that first month. Axel presses a kiss to the top vertebrae- cervical, and then to his occipital bone, dotting little kisses around to his zygomatic arches. A single kiss to the center of his forehead, the frontal lobe- the best place to take out a walker.  
  
He shudders and doesn’t look the Doctor in the eyes.  
  
He tries to smile.  
  
(It trembles.)  
  
“I’m not really sure,” he says. Something on the console releases a hiss of steam, and he smiles, because the TARDIS really knows him too well.  
  
Later, he lies in a real bed- clean and warm and loved, halfway wrapped around a faintly snoring Axel, and whispers, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be fine.”  
  
.  
  
Somewhere, there’s a star that’s collapsing into a black hole. It’s inevitable, really. Infinite space and time, of course there’s something dying somewhere. Somewhere else, there’s a baby being born. A newly hatched bird wriggling free of its shell. A brand new plant in the rainforest springing up from the decaying bark of an older giant. A star bursting into life. The universe in flux, ever changing, forever in a constant loop of life and death.  
  
Less common, are the things that stand still. The things that get stuck in stone -in time- and stay there, unmovable. There is a man named Captain Jack Harkness, who did not always go by that name, and will one day be known as another. There is Merlin, forever waiting. Flamel, with his stone. One day, there will be a man called Rory Williams, the Lone Centurion, the boy who waited. One day, the Doctor will even know him.  
  
Past Cygnus X-1 and Orion’s belt, there is a planet that never moves-- man made and completely impossible.  
  
Here, there is a lonely old alien and his blue box- a man who has lost his home and his people, but gained a place amongst the hearts of the stars.  
  
There is a boy, born from the inexplicable friction between body and soul-- a boy who should never have drawn breath, but exists, and loves all the same.  
  
And there is a man that isn’t really a man- a man that goes by the name of Axel, who used to be called Lea, who doesn’t have a heartbeat. He does not age, and when he bleeds, the substance is neither red nor is it liquid.  
  
He is looking for his heart.  
  
Throw maps, compasses, and calenders out the window-- and set a course for the unknown.


End file.
